Thank you!

I saw this idea last summer in the Disney Family Fun magazine, wrote it on a little notecard, an finally pulled it out! It has been soooo hot here, and the girls love ice cream, so I figured it would be fun to make our own.

Ingredients

1 C 1/2 and 1/2 2 T sugar
1/2 t vanilla

1/4 C salt (we used rock salt, but I think other types may work)
iceFirst mix your 1/2 and 1/2, sugar, and vanilla in a small ziploc bag.

Fill a gallon size ziploc 1/2 full of ice and add salt and small ziploc bag.

Seal and shake for 5 minutes. This was the hardest part because the bag gets really cold and little girls get tired of shaking. So we wrapped the bags in towels and jumped up and down. They probably only shook them for a minute and a half, and I shook them for a little while. They still worked even with inconsistent shaking.

Eat and enjoy!

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We were at Pizza Hut when my eldest started staring at the bubbles in my cup. I tried to explain to her that pop has bubbles because it has a gas (carbon dioxide) bubbled into it. I don't think she really understood, so it gave me an idea.

What You Need to See the Gas In Pop Rocks

Conducting the Pop Rocks Experiment

We had some Pop Rocks at home. I couldn't remember if the girls had tried them, but they would now!

All the popping brought some funny faces and giggles; while great, I wasn't sure they understood still.

So, I had them put some in a dish of water to see what would happen. Finally, they could see that as the Pop Rocks dissolved in the water gas was released in the form of bubbles. They could also hear the crackling of the gas breaking out of the candy.

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How Much Gas is Really in Pop Rocks

Remember when people told you if you drank pop with Pop Rocks your stomach would explode? Well, we decided to see what would happen if you really did combine pop and Pop Rocks!

My hope was combining soda with Pop Rocks to blow up a balloon would also prove to the girls the gas really was there.

We knew baking soda and vinegar combined could blow up a balloon extremely well, so we used it as a control.

Experiment to See if Pop Rocks and Pop can Blow Up a Balloon

Put baking soda in one balloon and Pop Rocks in another. I didn't measure, but I tried to keep amounts similar.

Add vinegar to one bottle and pop tp another (we used Pepsi). Again, I didn't use exact amounts, but tried to keep the liquids similar.

Put each balloon on top of their respective bottle.

Each girl chose a balloon and when we were ready (AKA when I had the camera set), I had them hold the balloons straight up to dump the contents into the bottle.

Both balloons inflated, but you can see the Pop Rocks balloon didn't get nearly as big as the baking soda balloon!

Conclusions of the Pop Rocks Experiment

We learned a couple things from experimenting with Pop Rocks.

Pop Rocks do contain gas. We felt it on our tongues and saw it bubble out in the water.

Although Pop Rocks and Pop both contain carbon dioxide bubbles they still can't compete with the chemical reaction of baking soda and vinegar for the amount of gas produced.

The small amount of gas contained in Pop Rocks and pop are not enough to make your stomach explode! At least not as long as you consume normal quantities of each.

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These rolls are awesome! I came across these a while back on pinterest and have made them a couple times since. The original blog post is from Une Bonne Vie, but they are so yummy I had to a share! The first time I made them I am pretty sure I had at least 3 at dinner because they are quite addicting. Nathan has decided they are better then soft pretzels and should be eaten with cheese sauce; the girls wanted butter on theirs. Eli and I were happy with them just as they were.

Before I get into the recipe let me just say I do not claim to be a baker, but I always end up needing more flour. Maybe my kitchen is too warm or maybe I just don't know what I am doing, but they are still really tasty. I can only imagine how great they would be if made by someone who knows what they are doing. Ingredients

Dough

6-7 1/2 C all-purpose flour

1 t salt

3 T canola oil

2 t active dry yeast

2 1/2 C milk, slightly warn

1 C water, slightly warm

Sea salt for sprinkling

Bath

7 C water

1 T salt

4 T baking soda

Start by mixing the yeast and warm milk (I had mine between 110 and 115). Set that aside for 10 minutes to rest.

Whisk 5 3/4 C flour and salt in a large bowl.

Add canola oil and warm water to yeast mixture. Pour into bowl with flour and salt. Knead in bowl until the dough is mostly soft. Only add enough flour so dough is easily handled. Dough will be somewhat stiff. Cover and allow to rise 1 hour.

Punch down and knead 1 minute. Cut in 15 pieces (or however many it takes to get the size rolls you want) and form into balls. Place on greased surface and let rise 15 minutes. In the meantime prepare bath by bringing water, salt, and baking soda to a rolling boil and preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place 3 rolls in the bath and poach for 1 minute. Place on well greased baking sheet and cut 2-3 lines across the top of poached rolls. Sprinkle with sea salt and bake for 20-25 minutes.

These are best the day they are made (but still very tasty the day after)! Enjoy!

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You can tell it has been dry here when the girls are amazed by rain. Last Saturday while driving home we hit a storm, and the girls were just in awe of all the rain!

Touched off by that rainstorm, I decided we would try some hands-on storm experiments.

We actually ended up doing 3 because they were all fairly short and easy to do, and they were all done in mason jars!

The first one (Storm in a Jar)we did was to make a "cloud" of shaving cream rain into a jar. You need a jar filled with water, shaving cream, colored water, and eye droppers.

Make your cloud on top of your water with the shaving cream. Our shaving cream was about empty, so ours was a bit more watery then I would have liked. Using the eye dropper put squirts of colored water on top of your cloud.

Once the cloud is saturated enough the color will begin to "rain" into the jar. It didn't take long for us since we had watery shaving cream.

Continue making it rain and add colors! The girls had a terrible looking storm going!

Actually by the end of it they had dark gray water and an overflowing jar!

The second experiment (Rain in a Jar) we did was to actually make it rain through condensation. All you need for this is hot water, a jar, a plate, and some ice.

Pour a couple inches of hot water in the jar and cover with the plate. Let sit. After a couple minutes place ice on the plate. The steam trapped in the air in the jar will condensate on the plate and roll down the sides of the jar. Similar to how rain comes down when hot and cold air mix. To be honest, the girls were not impressed by this. Too slow for their liking; maybe when they get older we will try again.

Just for fun while we were letting our hot water sit we tried a third experiment (Tornado in a Jar). All you need for this is a jar with a lid, water, and dish soap. Fill your jar with water, add a squirt of dish soap, and screw on the lid. Then you just have to swirl or shake the jar.

Look for a little tornado inside. I added more soap to try and get more obvious tornado, but the extra soap didn't really make it any more obvious.

The white part in the center is the tornado.

I also found an awesome site with lots of weather experiments (this is where the rain in a jar came from): Weather Wiz Kids. More recently we have also explored thunderstorms and made our own cloud!

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